Chapter 229: "We succeed or we blow up." (2/2)
”Well, time to bring light,” Rakna muttered and bent his neck to look up. ”Verias had a formation in place to imitate day-night cycles. I plan to do the same. It shouldn't be hard.”
”Shouldn't be hard, he says…” Natsu quietly grumbled. ”For your information, my knowledge of magic formations is nowhere near enough to--”
”Just draw over this,” Rakna cut him off and used a minimal amount of mana to create the outline of a magic circle with his star energy. He flicked his fingers upward and it stuck itself to the ceiling of the cavern. ”There. I'm sure you're not bad enough to fail at following an outline, right?”
”…no, of course not, My Lord. How should I do it? Carving?”
”Use this,” the therian tossed a dark blue pen and Natsu caught it with a strand of fire. ”It's filled with something called Eion ink. It's also mixed with a little bit of my blood with alchemy. It's a very good formation medium. Now get to work, there's a lot of surface to cover,” Rakna said and flashed to the ceiling in a burst of energy and began to draw the runes and shapes whilst dashing at near-unperceivable speeds.
Natsu glared at the pen entangled in his flames as if his current situation was all its fault. He sighed and took on a more humanoid shape before floating away to do his task.
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Meanwhile, ”Hm, this is the last one,” a one-tailed Rakna muttered as his group completed the last Quest they had, which entailed gathering a certain assortment of rare natural chocolates.
”There really are all kinds of clients,” Nyx deadpanned as she stared at the stone-like candy in her hand that was being retrieved by the System to complete the mission.
”Some people love to live in luxury for everything,” Kaelith said with a sneer. ”I would not put it below a random wealthy guy to request the Pavilion to collect these things for a fancy tea party.”
”You would know,” Rakna uttered with a small smile while the vixen sighed.
”I would know…” She mumbled gloomily.
”Hey, guys, should we check out the Trial?” Allan suggested as he looked at the map. ”It's close by and we can test the perks of the Guild.”
”Not a bad idea,” Rakna concurred. ”I want to see if I can do it as a clone too. But before that… let's do a little experiment,” he said and looked up at his pet who gazed back with a tilt of his heads.
”An experiment?” Flavia repeated curiously.
”Yes. It's even better now that he developed parallel processing. All right, litt-” Rakna paused and blinked a few times before resuming with a shrug, ”Little guy, we discussed this before.”
”I don't think he's very little right now…” Allan muttered and was very pointedly ignored.
”Use those five parallel processing heads of yours together to condense your Eion energy,” Rakna instructed unperturbed and Pronos nodded. Five of his heads then stretched out from the rest and faced the sky with open mouths. Promptly after, Eion energy in the form of thick smoke came out from his throat and fangs to condense in the spot where the five heads' sights crossed.
”What is he doing?” Evelyn asked as everyone watched. She was the only one in the group who knew about Eion energy to a greater extent since she had assisted Rakna in refining Eion to make ink and also extract Eion Stones with alchemy. ”Is he concentrating Eion for an attack?”
”Not exactly,” Rakna replied and mused. ”Let's see… looks like it will take a moment for Pronos to properly shape it; I can briefly explain it,” he said and everyone looked at him. ”Do you guys know the basic principle behind a nuclear explosion?”
”Splitting the atoms of a fissile element by throwing neutrons at it,” Flavia answered as the others drew a blank. ”Energy is then released in the form of heat and radiation while more neutrons are created, which will attack the rest of the element until there's no reaction. Essentially, a nuclear explosion, for the plainest ones, is a chain reaction of atoms being split apart.”
Rakna nodded calmly. ”The most common fissile elements are uranium or plutonium. They are such that they can sustain a chain reaction. However, regardless of that, any atom can be split. You just need to shoot a neutron into the nucleus at the correct speed.”
”Let's say you grabbed a random rock on the side of the road; every atom that composes it can be split and detonated. But unlike fissile elements, splitting one of them will not make a sustainable chain reaction. But that doesn't erase the fact that even an object size of a rock can very well create a massive explosion if all of its atoms detonate at once.”
”Okay?” Allan made a weird expression. ”Why are you telling us that though?”
”I was coming to it. Basically, what I'm saying is; what if there was a material, or rather, an energy that could cannibalize its own atoms and ignite?” As soon as Rakna worded this sentence, anyone with a functioning mind could infer what was happening.
”Wait, are you serious?” Kaelith uncrossed her arms with wide eyes. She glanced at Pronos who appeared quite strained by the small sphere of energy he was condensing. ”Can that thing actually atomically split itself?”
Rakna nodded. ”Sort of. Back on Earth, it was a state secret but it's not important here so I'll tell you. The bombs Aurora made, commonly known as Eion Nukes, are actually created by fusing and then splitting the atoms of a condensed agglomerate of Eion.”
”Fusion?” Flavia reiterated.
”Mhm. The principle is simple. Eion is normally a very stable energy and it's impossible to use as a fissile element. Not only is it hard to work with non-solid elements but the nuclei of the atoms are impenetrable by any method we know. However, the problem can be circumvented when it is caught in an atomic fusion. Atomic fusion is a reaction that occurs under extreme heat conditions within confined spaces. But even that changes with Eion. When it is being compressed beyond a certain limit, the atoms begin to naturally heat up and a core will be formed among them.”
”A core?” Evelyn interjected pensively. ”Do you mean the Eion becomes…?”
”'Voracious' would be an accurate portrayal,” Rakna stated. ”When the first two atoms reach their plasma states and fuse, they will begin to 'eat' the ones around it until there's none left. Once that is done, you have to let it cool down without letting it get in contact with the air. The basic way of doing that was to place it in a vacuum for about 12 hours.”
”What about the fission part of it?” Marie asked. ”And why cool it down?”
”That's the thing. Both are correlated,” Rakna said with a small smile. ”You'll see. For now, let's get the compression going,” he declared as he saw that Pronos was finished gathering the necessary amount of Eion. ”Normally, we would need particle accelerators, a powerful magnetic field, and a gravitational bound but some magic formations and raw mana should do the trick… maybe.”
Kaelith groaned. ”Why can't I help but think that this is extremely dangerous?”
”All experiments are,” Rakna quipped and drew a dozen of runes with a swipe of his hands. ”Get ready, little guy. We succeed or we blow up,” he joked with a cheery tone and his group could only facepalm.